The applicant meanwhile stood by and looked foolish, and as I was not sorry to have at any rate one adherent in a strange land, I agreed to employ him, upon terms not unusual among natives--a new suit of clothes, his food, and the sum of one toman a month--about three shillings and sixpence, or tenpence halfpenny a week. His food included cigarettes, an inexpensive item, for they were thirty-five for the equivalent of a penny, and by purchasing tobacco it was possible to make as many as fifty for the same sum, a “baichu” in the dialect of southern Kurdistan. [Sidenote: THE RENEGADE EATS DIRT] During the conversation I was called to Lady Adela, and now, followed by my servant--whose garb reflected little credit upon his master, as he had not failed to tell me--I obeyed the summons. In the audience was a group of maids laughing at what amused them as well as the armed retainers outside. Standing near the door was Amin Effendi, protesting; and sitting in her usual place on the mattress, Lady Adela in her deep contralto tones called him every vile name in the vocabulary of Kurdistan. As I came in she renewed her abuse, called Heaven to blast a creature who had violated all the tradition of the Kurds, who had blackened the face of the Jafs before a stranger, who had presumed to alarm a guest under her protection, and finally commanded him to apologise to me there and then in the words of humblest degradation. He obeyed with a bad grace. “Mud is upon my head, filth upon my eyes; I have eaten ordure and my heart is vile; I kiss the hoofs of the ass thou ridest, and clean the shoes of thy servant, whose slave am I; I go abased before all men, a speaker of lies, and I am not fit to attend the womenfolk,” and so on, and yet again and again. He was reluctant at first, but the sound of a cartridge clicking home in a Martini breech and the feel of a knife-point at the back of his neck made him voluble, to the great amusement of the company, and at last I begged Lady Adela to let him go. So she allowed him to creep away, while the maids, unrestrained, advised him to try Epsom salts for the ills of his soul. I had not looked for this kind of revenge, nor desired it, but everyone present seemed to think that I had achieved a considerable victory over one naturally at enmity with me, and I was, despite emphatic protests, put down as an accomplished physician, from the fact of Lady Adela discomfiting her old retainer for my benefit. The rough but sincere congratulations poured upon me by man and maid alike demanded some diversion of object, and suggesting a cup of tea at the coffee-house, I left with a score of men-at-arms to accompany me and retail the story of Amin Effendi to the public there, who by that mysterious telepathy of the East had already got wind of the tale.